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COUNTDOWN TO PEARL HARBOR is a fascinating look at the 12 days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor --- the warnings, clues and missteps. Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Steve Twomey unravels the crucial characters and moments, and produces an edge-of-your seat drama with fascinating details about America at this moment in its history. By the end, the reader understands how assumption is the root of disaster, and how sometimes a gamble pays off.

Charles Lenox has received a cryptic plea for help from an old Harrow schoolmate, Gerald Leigh, but when he looks into the matter, he finds that his friend has suddenly disappeared. As boys they had shared a secret: a bequest from a mysterious benefactor had smoothed Leigh’s way into the world after the death of his father. Lenox, already with a passionate interest in detective work, made discovering the benefactor's identity his first case --- but was never able to solve it. Now, years later, Leigh has been the recipient of a second, even more generous bequest. Is it from the same anonymous sponsor? Or is the money poisoned by ulterior motives?

Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was among the last generation of gay Americans who grew up wondering if there were others out there like himself. WHEN WE RISE is Jones' account of his remarkable life. He chronicles the heartbreak of losing countless friends to AIDS, which very nearly killed him, too; his co-founding of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation during the terrifying early years of the epidemic; his conception of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the largest community art project in history; the bewitching story of 1970s San Francisco and the magnetic spell it cast for thousands of young gay people and other misfits; and the stories of Cleve's passionate relationships with friends and lovers during an era defined by both unprecedented freedom and possibility, and prejudice and violence alike.

After he died in the backseat of a Cadillac at the age of 29, Hank Williams --- a frail, flawed man who had become country music’s most compelling and popular star --- instantly morphed into its first tragic martyr. Having hit the heights in the postwar era with simple songs of heartache and star-crossed love, he would become in death a template for the rock generation to follow. Now presenting the first fully realized biography of Hiram King Williams in a generation, Mark Ribowsky vividly returns us to the world of country’s origins --- in this case, 1920s Alabama, where Williams was born into the most trying of circumstances, which included a dictatorial mother, a henpecked father and an agonizing spinal condition.

Elizabeth was crowned at 25 after a tempestuous childhood as a bastard and an outcast, but it was only when she reached 50 and all hopes of a royal marriage were dashed that she began to wield real power in her own right. For 25 years, she had struggled to assert her authority over advisers who pressed her to marry and settle the succession; now, she was determined not only to reign but also to rule. In this intimate biography of England's most ambitious Tudor queen, John Guy introduces us to a woman who is refreshingly unfamiliar: at once powerful and vulnerable, willful and afraid.

One sunny summer morning, a young woman and her six-year-old daughter are run over by a car. Both are killed immediately. Is it an accident, or did someone kill them on purpose? The same morning, the husband of the deceased young woman disappears. During the police investigation, it turns out that the husband had recently bought a property that nobody knew anything about. A few days later, a macabre discovery is made in a forest nearby.

Nick Paleologus, a coolly efficient Englishman, is summoned home to resolve a dispute that threatens to tear his family apart. His father, Michael, is a retired archaeologist and supposed descendent of the last Emperors of Byzantium. Michael has received a hugely generous offer for the family estate in Cornwall, but refuses to sell --- and refuses to divulge why. Soon the stalemate between Nick’s siblings and their father is tragically broken, and only then do they discover why their father was bound to protect the house at all costs. Their desperate efforts to conceal the truth drag them into a deadly conflict with an unseen and unknown enemy.

Out Christmas shopping one December afternoon, Jessica Gould meets the charming Dominic Lacey and impulsively agrees to go home with him for a drink. What follows is a Twelve Days of Christmas from hell as Lacey holds Jessica captive, forcing her to wear his missing wife’s gowns and eat lavish holiday meals. Each day he gifts her with one item from his twisted past --- his dead sister’s favorite toy, disturbing family photos, a box of teeth. As the days pass and the “gifts” become darker and darker, Jessica realizes that Lacey has a plan for her, and he never intends to let her go. But Jessica has a secret of her own --- a secret that may just mean she has a chance to make it out alive.

Foraging persists as a viable economic strategy both in remote regions and within the bounds of developed nation-states. Given the economic alternatives available, why do some groups choose to maintain their hunting and gathering lifeways? Through a series of detailed case studies, the contributors to this volume examine the decisions made by modern-day foragers to sustain a predominantly hunting and gathering way of life. What becomes clear is that hunter-gatherers continue to forage because the economic benefits of doing so are high relative to the local alternatives and, perhaps more importantly, because the social costs of not foraging are prohibitive.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF CHANGE is a collection of articles that demonstrates the power of the human spirit to transform the environments in which we live. This inspiring book profiles people who refused to accept that things couldn’t change, who saw the possibility of making something better and didn’t hesitate to act. It explores communal architecture produced not by specialists but by people, drawing on their common lives and experiences, who have a unique insight into their particular needs and environments. Running through their stories is a constant theme of social justice as an underlying principle of the built environment.